Well, I can't believe it has been more than six years since I've conceived this silly idea. Or, rather, the character, Aomi, since she was made up before the plot. Aomi first started out as a jointed paper doll with a red googly eye I happened to stumble upon.

No idea how a simple doll prompted me to make up a story about her, but shortly after I made up something (aka what you should've previously read before turning to this post) that could've fit into a visual novel pretty well, and this ad-like drawing proves it.

I also had an idea to make a VN specifically for Gameboy Color and even tried drawing some sprites for it, but had never attempted learning programming for GB back then despite, uh, being a software engineering student. I still beat myself up about it.

Aomi stayed with one eye for not very long, and once again, I'm not sure how it came to be. At some point I wanted to pair her up with an existing male original character, but then decided to let him live his own life.

Then at some other point I turned 18 and allowed myself to check out anime porn and eroge, and that made my Aomi drawings more anime-ish and weirdly horny.

Back then I wanted to name the protagonist Kaoru as an homage to a certain kusoge easter egg. Glad a definite name and gender for the other main character didn't stick around.

I made a brief return to concept drawing and actual game designing when I learned of GB Studio back in March 2019. Here's more or less recent concept art where I tried exploring various drawing styles and see what fits the theme, as well as the latest Aomi reference I've ever made (2020, I think).

I wanted to turn this story into an adventure game complete with puzzles and memorabilia-collecting. The entire game concept was already done, I only needed to draw art, write a bunch of in-game text and program it with GB Studio. I even made this blog to document my progress! But, as you might have guessed, that didn't work out. And even my return to this idea a couple of years later with a prototype written in assembly didn't work out the way I wanted, and because of that I am now suffering from messed up sleep schedule.
Let's look at all the unused art assets from that game now, shall we?

Oh wait, I think I do have an idea what inspired me to create a story about an imaginary anime girl.
